The first draft is always perfect, it only has one job

September 1, 2015

Throwback post from 2015

I wrote and published this waaaaay back in September 2015, and I recently dug it out of my old GitHub account to share it again here. Publishing slightly edited cause everything I wrote 10 years ago feels cringey.

I was talking to a colleague about documentation, and he apologized about how his notes were a "bad first draft" of a proposal. Without even thinking, I blurted out "the first draft is always perfect, because all it needs to do is exist".

That's right. The first draft is always perfect. Perfect. Its only job is to exist. Like minerals. Like dirt. Like air. It just needs to be. A first draft is something made tangible from nothing — its only purpose is to pierce the space between your thoughts and the rest of the world.

I picked up this wisdom from my thesis advisor. After a semester and a summer of research, I was struggling with getting the thoughts out onto paper. I was starting to fall behind schedule. After listening to me whining about how I just couldn't express what I had to say, my advisor challenged me. He said:

You're overthinking it. Just sit down and write. The first draft is always perfect. All it's got to do is exist. So just sit down and write.

His advice stuck. I banged out a first draft within a few weeks. I revised, re-thought, and re-imagined that draft. I ended up with a thesis that I'm proud of. I still have my first draft somewhere, and I'm sure it's perfect.

Go write.